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Pirates Fantasy Team

Each year, baseball fans across the country participate in fantasy baseball leagues to build a team featuring their favorite players. Heading into a fantasy draft, the mindset is to pick the best available players at each position in order to build a championship team. However, we decided to take a little different approach in one of our leagues.

Introducing the 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates fantasy baseball team:

Since the Pirates aren’t an offensive juggernaut, we fully expect 0 wins. Plus, in a week long head-to-head match-up, you simply cannot go an entire day without a point if the Pirates have a day off. Still, it gives a solid statistical breakdown of each week. If the Bucs go on a long losing streak without much offense/long winning streak with a ton of offense, it will sure to be reflected in the fantasy league. Furthermore, we’ll be able to see how each player stacks up against other players in the MLB, as well as how their stats translate fantasy-wise.

Drafting the team was simple. Everyone jumps for the best available in Round 1. In a 12 team league, the top 12 players usually exit the board quickly. However, we snagged the 22nd player on the board, Andrew McCutchen, with the 7th overall pick. After taking Cutch, the next best Pirate was Neil Walker, coming in at 131st on the draft board. Since we’ll be playing this on MLB.com, there was no need to pick individual pitchers, but instead just take the entire staff. Also, this is a Top Ten Scoring league, so the best at each position will take the spot in the lineup. This will help at spots such as 1B, where there may be multiple players playing there each week (platoon).

Each week (probably Sunday night), we’ll post an update of that week’s fantasy scoreboard. Not only will we see how the Pirates stacked up in the fantasy matchup, but also how they produced in real life. Who stepped up for the Bucs this week? Who did nothing at all? How did the pitching staff fare? Our first update will be coming this Sunday, as Week 1 consists of the weekend series. Check back to see how the Bucs did in the real world, fantasy world, and beyond.